Electronics projects, experiments, tutorials, and more!

Month: February 2018

Last wasn’t a very good year for projects (and this year honestly doesn’t look much different 😐). Over the course of the year, I was trying to work up to a grand Christmas fountain show with an LED matrix backdrop. I got the backdrop worked out but nothing else… and even with the matrix actually working, I had no motivation to do anything with it.

It’s just been sitting around, collecting dust, and being a massive waste of space so, before I start pulling it apart, I figured I’d make a quick post to show it off.

For the power supply, I used one of those power supply boxes from China where you feed it 120v ac and it spits out 5v. I wanted the project to have its own voltmeter display (inspired by something I saw at Toronto’s Maker Festival last year) so I got that in place. I also wanted a large e-stop button but, in the end, I ended up with a simple switch.

Here is the completed 5v power supply. This one is rated at 2A but you can get ones that can put out many more times that current. These short terminal blocks make it easy to connect and disconnect things.

The matrix is setup on some foam core. One of the three panels was already a year old and was used in my 2016 Christmas light show. I made two identical ones and wired them together. The support pieces are made of scrap PVC pipe I managed to get. Everything else is tape and hot glue.

Here it is from the back, powered up. The glow from the front is also nice, but I realize if I were to do something like this again, I’d want a material that’s a little more transparent to get more light in front.

With the effort put into it, I’m actually quite proud of how it turned out. I just don’t like the amount of space it’s currently taking up while not having any motivation to anything with it so I’ll be pulling it apart. I’ll keep the panels seperated, and maybe use my sketchy 5v power supply in another project.